Barack Obama will refuse to let Tim Geithner quit

President Barack Obama has insisted he would refuse to accept the resignation of Tim Geithner, the embattled Treasury Secretary, and instead tell him: "Sorry buddy, you've still got the job".

Barack Obama has insisted he would refuse to accept the resignation of Treasury Secretary Tim GeithnerPhoto: AP

By Toby Harnden in Washington

5:50PM GMT 22 Mar 2009

In an interview with the CBS "60 Minutes" programme, Mr Obama pleaded for more patience over dealing with the economic crisis.

He said: "It's going to take a little bit more time than we would like to make sure that we get this plan just right. Of course, then we'd still be subject to criticism.

"What's taken so long? You've been in office a whole 40 days and you haven't solved the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression."

Seeking to channel public outrage over lavish bonuses for financiers from the failed insurance giant AIG, he urged corporate executives to visit Middle America.

"If you go to North Dakota, or you go to Iowa, or you go to Arkansas, where folks would be thrilled to be making $75,000 a year – without a bonus – then I think they'd get a sense of why people are frustrated," he said.

His unstinting support for Mr Geithner came as he prepared to unveil a plan for a long-term overhaul of the crisis-hit American financial system.

Officials said that the plan would include using $100 billion in taxpayer money to ease the credit crisis by leveraging as much as $1 trillion in so-called toxic assets so they could be taken off the books of struggling banks.

Christina Romer, a senior economic adviser to Mr Obama, said Mr Geithner would use part of what remains in the $700 billion financial rescue package to persuade private investors to buy the stricken assets and hold them until the financial system recovers.

In addition, she said, Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation would provide more capital as part of a package designed to unlock the credit system so that consumers and businesses could take loans.

When Mr Geithner unveiled the outline of the Obama administration's bank rescue programme on February 10, the Dow Jones industrial average plummeted by 380 points as investors complained it lacked any specific of details.

Mr Obama's financial regulatory proposals are expected to include recommendations for rigorous fresh regulation of executive pay and bonuses at banks and Wall Street firms.

Last week, Mr Obama struggled to maintain public confidence in his handling of the economy and congressional auditors estimated the country's budget deficit in coming years would be nearly double what he had predicted.